-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
The Assassin’s Song opens in the 1960s in a village in Western India, the site of the thirteenth-century Sufi shrine of Pirbaag. Karsan Dargawalla is next in line after his father to assume the lordship of the shrine. But Karsan longs to be “just ordinary”–to be a great cricketer and play for his country and, at the urging of a truck driver, to learn more and more about the world. In secret he applies to go to Harvard, and when he is accepted, he can’t resist the opportunity–though this means profound disappointment for his father and heartbreak for his mother. Soon the intellectual excitement and discoveries of his new life compel him to abdicate his succession to the throne. But even as he succeeds in his “ordinary life” – becoming a professor, marrying and having a son, leading a charmed suburban existence in British Columbia – his heritage continues to haunt him. Finally when a personal tragedy strikes in Canada, and Pirbaag is devastated by communal violence, he is drawn back across thirty years of separation and silence to discover what, if anything, is left for him in India.
"Frequent shifts in time and perspective (including flashes of the shrine's early history) heighten Vassanji's evocative depiction of India's ongoing postcolonial tumult, mournfully personalized by the fate of the fractured family at the novel's heart." - PW.
"There are no passages of poetic flourishes, and a reader might pause here and there, not to admire the language but to absorb a simple truth, simply stated." - The Washington Post.
"Another fine, though imperfect novel from an intelligent and inventive storyteller." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Starred Review. Richly detailed and socially astute, this is an exceptionally sensitive novel of violent conflicts and private suffering, emotional verity and metaphysical yearning." - Booklist.
This information about The Assassin's Song was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Vassanji has won the Canadian Giller Prize twice with The Book of Secrets and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall. He was born in Kenya and raised in Tanzania. Before coming to Canada in 1978, he attended MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, where he specialized in theoretical nuclear physics. His wife, Nurjehan, was born in Tanzania. They have two sons, Anil, and Kabir. He lives in Toronto, and visits Africa and India often.
If you liked The Assassin's Song, try these:
by Joan Didion
Published 2007
'An act of consummate literary bravery, a writer known for her clarity allowing us to watch her mind as it becomes clouded with grief.'
by Brian Strause
Published 2006
By turns humorous and heartbreaking, personal and sweeping, familiar and extraordinary, Brian Strause's first novel takes readers on an unforgettable emotional journey into America's heartland.
by Lolly Winston
Published 2005
Filled with laugh-out-loud humor, struggles, triumphs, and plenty of midnight trips to the fridge, Good Grief is a funny, wise, and heartbreakingly poignant novel from one of fiction's freshest and most exciting new voices.
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
